“I like when you talk like that,” Meadow had no idea how sensual her voice sounded to Zaire.
His dick jumped and he pushed it down through his pants. “You can’t talk to me like that.”
“You just said I can say what I want to say.”
“That’s what you got from that?”
Her head bobbed and her eyes fluttered. “Ye?—”
Before she finished, Zaire hooked a hand around her waist and pulled her into him so fast her breath jumped. His mouth met hers, hot and hungry, kissing her like he meant every word he’d been holding in. Meadow gripped his shoulders hard, knees going weak.
He caught her, his hand firm on her hip, deepening the kiss until she melted against him.
By the time he pulled back, Meadow’s chest was rising quick, lips swollen, eyes glassy.
Zaire wiped his thumb across her bottom lip and shook his head slow. “That’s ‘cause I ain’t tasted you in four days…don’t do that shit again.”
“Okay,” she sighed still drunk from his kiss. “C’mon before Ray sends out a search team…we’re late for dinner.”
Zaire pulled her back again just to stare into her eyes. The way he smiled, it rivaled the sun. “Marai,” he nodded. “My Black Cinderella.”
“How you know?” She tripped on her emotions. “You said it before but now I have the courage to ask.”
“I’m an educated nigga and remember a story about the Black Cinderella— Marai.”
“I tell my Mama stories about Marai except it’s me…I’m Marai.”
He gazed down at her. “The finest Marai I’ve ever seen.”
Meadow froze under his words, her chest tight in that aching, beautiful way. Marai wasn’t some KidVerse character everybody grew up with. It was a story whispered through Black households - passed down, remixed and reimagined. A girl who didn’t have magical godmothers or glass slippers, just grit and heart and a belief that the world could be bigger than the small life she’d been handed.
Marai worked with what she had, made beauty out of scraps, kept dreaming even when nobody gave her a reason to. She wasn’t saved - she survived, standing tall enough for love to finally see her…to choose her.
Meadow had been telling her Mama that story for years, never admitting why she loved it so much.
She loved it because Marai was the girl who kept going.
The girl who never felt seen.
The girl who wanted more but didn’t know if she deserved it.
Hearing Zaire say it…naming her as that girl…it cracked her walls right open.
Meadow blinked, emotion burning behind her lashes. He wasn’t just flattering her. He understood her in a way she didn’t expect from somebody who’d only been in her life a short time.
He wasn’t calling her Cinderella because she needed saving.
He was calling her Marai because he saw the royalty she fought her way into on her own.
Zaire sawher.
And nobody had ever done that before.
“C’mon, baby,” Zaire’s swirly voice pulled her back into the moment.
As they madeit to the house, Meadow saw the utility truck pulling off and she choked on her own breath as cold dread washed over her. Her mama always said, your dirty laundry would start to smell one day. She tried to brush past Zaire like the notice meant nothing, like her chest hadn’t just sunk ten feet into the dirt. She went to grab the flowerpot to hide the orange paper better, but Zaire put his hand on it first.
“Move,” she said quietly.
